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SHEPHERDSTOWN, West Virginia : Democrat Hillary Clinton on Wednesday vowed she was staying in the party's bitter White House race, despite mounting pressure to hand the baton over to rival Barack Obama.
"I am staying in this race until there is a nominee," Clinton told reporters in West Virginia, which holds its presidential primary next Tuesday. "I am going to work as hard as I can to become that nominee."
The former first lady had leapt straight back onto the campaign trail with a hastily arranged stop here, after being trounced by Obama in Tuesday's North Carolina primary and winning by only a hair's breadth in Indiana.
But the results triggered swift calls Wednesday for her to end the party's agony, and step down to allow the healing process to begin ahead of the November presidential elections.
George McGovern, the Democrats' defeated presidential candidate in 1972, urged the New York senator to step aside as he threw his support behind Obama.
"I do not see how she has much chance of pulling out the nomination now, and I think it is important for Democrats to get united to win the general election in November," McGovern, who previously supported Clinton, told Fox News.
"Toast," trumpeted the New York Post banner headline over a picture of Clinton saying she had blown her last shot in Indiana in the marathon nomination battle.
Obama bounced back from weeks of missteps and the controversy over his former pastor that had threatened to derail his bid to become the first black US president by thrashing Clinton 56-42 percent in North Carolina.
The former first lady then took Indiana by 51-49 percent, but only after an agonisingly slow vote count that saw her commanding early lead whittled down to a mere 18,400 votes.
In a further sign that she is floundering, her aides admitted that Clinton had lent her campaign 6.4 million dollars over the last month from her own pocket.
She loaned her effort five million dollars on April 11, some 11 days before her win in Pennsylvania gave her campaign a new lease on life and unlocked a new spurt of fundraising.
The former first lady then funnelled another one million dollars into the campaign account on May 1, followed by 425,000 dollars more on Monday, the aides said.
But with Obama only 183 delegates shy of the 2,025 needed for the party's nomination, Clinton, on her own quest to be the first woman in the Oval Office, appears to be running out of options.
"We now know who the Democratic nominee is going to be, and no one is going to dispute it," said NBC channel's commentator Tim Russert.
Other commentators said the party's remaining undeclared superdelegates, who can vote for the candidate of their choice, would soon start flocking to Obama's side having held off while awaiting Tuesday's election results.
"More superdelegates will come out today for Barack Obama. They will come three, four, five at a time, and this nomination will be locked up," said ABC television commentator George Stephanopoulos.
Clinton aides also fiercely rejected calls for her to quit the race, saying she would continue to press her case that she would be the best nominee to take on Republican John McCain in November.
"The reality is that many pundits have counted Senator Clinton out many times in this contest," said Howard Wolfson, her communications director.
"Many of them are doing it again today. The punditocracy does not control this contest, voters do."
Only six primaries, with a total of 217 delegates at stake, remain: West Virginia, Kentucky, Oregon, Montana and South Dakota, and the US territory of Puerto Rico.
Obama still has to convince Democratic party leaders of his electability in any match-up with McCain, as exit polls on Tuesday showed he had won massive black support, but barely a third of the white vote in North Carolina.
He scored well, however, with voters in terms of his identifying with their values, suggesting he had deflected Clinton's accusation that he is an "elitist" out of touch with blue-collar voters. - AFP/de
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